Board to revisit Alpine school’s naming process

NAME GAME

What: The Grossmont school board will consider rescinding a decision to name a high school planned for Alpine after Ronald Reagan in favor of establishing a committee to solicit campus names from the community.

When: 6 p.m. today

Where: East County Education Center, 924 E. Main St., El Cajon

ALPINE  Ronald Reagan may no longer be the front-runner in the naming of a new high school planned for Alpine.

The Grossmont school board today will consider rescinding a controversial proposal to name the campus after the 40th president. Trustees are instead being asked to establish a committee to solicit potential school names — names that would not exclude the conservative icon.

The change comes after Alpine residents complained they were shut out of the naming process for their long-awaited neighborhood campus. The board voted in March to push the Reagan name and to cancel a policy calling for high schools to be named for their geographic region — as for El Cajon Valley, Mount Miguel and Granite Hills high schools — without consulting the close-knit community.

“My goal is to kind of slow down the process to give everybody appropriate time to give input and make sure everyone is heard,” said board President Robert Shield. “There is a certain intensity this took on that we are still catching up to.”

Parents, teachers and others were outraged at the Reagan proposal, not because they dislike the popular president and former California governor, but because they were left out of the process.

Some are still skeptical of the board’s intentions.

“It’s very easy to put people on a committee that will bring back a predetermined outcome,” said Alpine resident Leona Bennett, whose two grandsons will attend the new $57 million high school that is set to open in 2013.

Bennett helped collect more than 300 signatures on a petition asking the board to give the community a say in the naming process.

The matter has spread beyond Alpine and the Grossmont Union High School District.

Republicans across the nation have latched on to the issue, including conservative activist and former Reagan confidant Grover Norquist.

Next year is Reagan’s centennial, and a movement is under way to name public institutions, the $50 bill and even mountains for Reagan.

Norquist’s Ronald Reagan Legacy Project has urged the Grossmont school board to name its high school for Reagan, touting on the project’s Web site that “Alpine has the opportunity to be the first community to name a high school for Ronald Reagan in California.”

To date, four high schools nationwide are named for Reagan — in Texas, Florida, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Some in the district had talked about naming the Alpine school after Reagan in 2004.